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The first time anyone saw it, it was hanging in the back of a roadside antique shop—an iron mask, shaped like a twisted fusion of a rabbit’s skull and a scorpion’s carapace. Long, serrated ears curled backward like blades. The eye sockets were too wide, too hungry. And beneath the jaw hung a rusted, barbed tail like a stinger, wrapped around the chin as if ready to strike.
No one knew who made it.
No one wanted to touch it.
Except for one man.
Dorian Vyre had spent his life hunting the grotesque—cursed heirlooms, haunted art, forbidden artifacts. He lived for things whispered about, feared, locked away. So when the shopkeeper told him the mask wasn’t for sale, he laughed.
Everything was for sale if you offered the right price.
He bought it that night.
And by morning, the shopkeeper was found with her throat torn open, as if a hooked claw had scooped it out.
Dorian brought the mask home, placing it on a pedestal in his basement—his private trophy room of horrors. He swore it whispered when the lights went out, the sound like chittering claws dragging across bone.
He tried to ignore it.
He tried to sleep.
But at 3:11 a.m., something scraped its way across the basement floor.
Dorian sat up in bed.
The scraping grew louder.
Closer.
Rhythmic.
The sound of something crawling.
He went downstairs with a flashlight, heart punching his ribs. The beam trembled as he reached the basement door. He opened it slowly—
—only to find the pedestal empty.
The mask was gone.
Before he could react, a soft sound came from behind him:
tsk-tsk-tsk…
Like claws tapping hardwood.
He spun around—
The mask was on the wall… watching him.
Its empty sockets glowed faintly red, pulsing like breath. Its tail uncoiled and clinked against the wood as it twitched. The metal ears twitched too, angling toward him like a predator tasting the air.
Dorian backed away.
The mask dropped from the wall without falling—
It landed on its claws.
The hybrid thing was no longer just a mask. It had teeth now. It had limbs. It had purpose.
It scuttled toward him on its sharpened ear-blades, tail arched overhead like a venomous spear.
Dorian screamed and fled upstairs, slamming the door. The creature crashed into the wood from the other side, the stinger punching through the panel near his face.
He stumbled back, shaking.
Then the stinger slid back through the hole.
Silence.
That night, the thing hunted him through his own house. He barricaded one room, only to hear the creature clicking its way across the ceiling. He hid in a closet, only to see the tail slide under the door like a serpent. Every time he fled to another room, it was already there—perched in a corner, hanging upside down, waiting.
It wasn’t just a monster.
It was a mask that wanted a wearer.
By dawn, Dorian was exhausted, delirious, cornered in his living room. The creature crawled onto his chest, its face inches from his. Its metal jaws opened, revealing a darkness deeper than the mask itself.
“Get… off…” he gasped, pushing weakly.
The creature didn’t attack.
It climbed his face.
He screamed as it tightened around his skull, metal fusing to skin, claws burrowing through his temples. His voice warped, muffled, swallowed.
When the mask finished bonding, Dorian’s body went still.
Then he stood.
His limbs moved like they weren’t his. His neck twitched. The tail unwrapped from his chin and curled behind his head like a crown of bone.
The mask—now fully alive—flexed its jaw and spoke through his with a distorted, echoing voice:
“At last… a host.”
Dorian was gone, swallowed into the metal void.
Only the creature remained.
Neighbors later reported seeing him wandering the woods at night, head glowing dim red. Some said they saw something leap from the treetops—something with long ears like swords and a tail like a hooked spine.
Pets went missing.
Then children.
When search teams entered the woods, they found claw marks etched into trees—symbols carved deep, repeating over and over:
WEAR THE MASK
FEED THE STINGER
BECOME THE HYBRID
And sometimes, late at night, hikers swear they hear the chittering rhythm of metal claws behind them…
tsk-tsk-tsk…
Growing faster.
Closer.
Until they stop hearing anything at all.
If you ever see an iron mask shaped like a monstrous rabbit fused with a scorpion…
don’t touch it.
It isn’t waiting to be worn.
It’s waiting to choose.
